


Born This Way

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Getting Together, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 15:18:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7273375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of series 3, the team's fractures start to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born This Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/gifts).



> Written as a Christmas present for the exceedingly lovely sandrine.
> 
> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2012.

That night, the night Morgan died, Kent went home and threw up until he couldn't stand it any more, tears streaming down his face. There'd been so much blood, which he thought he'd got used to, only it turned out to be different when you were feeling guilty about the person who died. And then there'd been Chandler, stalking off down the darkened corridor, looking as if his world had just come crumbling down around him.

Kent had stayed as late as he possibly could, helping take witness statements but as with all such deaths on police grounds, it had been referred higher up the food chain, and the whole team had been given the week off. None of them had objected. None of them really wanted to be there to witness their notes poured over, their colleagues interrogated about proper procedures.

There was nothing his team could have done differently, Kent knew that. It was the duty sergeant who'd probably cop the most flak for it, him and the other uniforms. That didn't really help though. They'd all badly miscalculated the depth of a mother's grief.

Kent spent the first day off in bed. He'd mumbled to his room-mates that they’d all been given time off after a bad case, and when the picture of Morgan flickered up on to the news and he blanched, he knew they'd ask no questions. They still had a hard time thinking of Kent as a policeman, never mind one who'd faced off with serial killers.

But Kent had never actually been the kind of man, or teenager for that matter, to stay in bed for days on end. He liked to be doing something, to have a purpose. And right now he just found himself adrift.

He'd wanted to call Chandler, but could not possibly find the words. He knew Skip would just tell him to enjoy his rest. Riley had her kids. Mansell was probably drowning himself in women and booze.

Finally he found himself walking along Westminster Bridge, not thinking of anything much really, just walking aimlessly.

He wasn't really aware of the time, just that it was late. Hardly anyone else was around, but cars still kept up a steady progress along the bridge. He was half-way along when he recognised a familiar figure, standing and staring out at the water.

He slowed to a stop. He wasn't sure whether he did want company now that he had found it. And Chandler – well, one never knew with Chandler.

He turned to look behind him, thinking that his room-mates had probably returned home by now and when he looked back at Chandler, he found that Chandler had walked silently up to him and was standing mere feet away.

“Kent,” he said, his voice hoarse. His eyes were red and Kent knew what that meant, had seen that look in his own mirror many times before.

“Sir,” Kent said. “Are you - “ He stopped. Of course he wasn't okay. None of them were okay.

“I've been thinking,” Chandler said, as if Kent hadn't spoken, “that perhaps I'm not cut out for this job after all.”

Kent was shaking his head before Chandler had finished. “Maybe it's not the job that's the problem.” Chandler's eyes widened a fraction, but Kent barrelled on. “Maybe, we're not, some of us, we're not meant to have jobs and other things. Maybe we're just supposed to have this.”

Chandler didn't respond, just turned back to the river and looked over the side of the bridge. “I've considered it, of course,” he said. “Never actually tried it though. Not, not part of my plan.” It took Kent a moment to realise what he was talking about.

“Suicide?” he asked, completely taken by surprise. It hadn't occurred to him, not even in his loneliest moments. He'd always believed that it was a coward's way out and selfish to boot.

“I keep seeing all the things I could have done. Getting involved with a witness? Stupid. Stupid thing to do. Believing that someone would, that I could...stupid.”

“It's not stupid to hope, sir.” Kent took a few tentative steps closer to Chandler and put his hands on the bridge railing, hoping the cold of its metal against his skin would anchor him, make what he was about to stay a little easier.

“I stormed out on her, sir. I apologised, but I – it didn't go like I'd imagined. She seemed to think - “

He stopped, because he wasn't sure why she'd said what she had. Wasn't sure he was ready to admit his heart clenched at the thought of it. Being jealous and having someone point it out to you were two completely different things and Kent wasn't ready to have that conversation with Chandler. Didn't think he'd ever be ready.

Chandler only looked mildly disapproving at Kent, as if he had no room inside him except for his own grief. His own self-flagellation.

“I'm not the sort of man who. I like things my own. I don't.” Chandler stopped. He'd had this conversation once with Miles, he wasn't sure he wanted to continue it with Kent.

Kent hesitated. Neither of them was in the perfect place for this conversation, but then perhaps such a place didn't exist. Who said you couldn’t make something out of the bloody remains of a crisis?

“I think you need to stop thinking so hard, sir. It'll come, whatever it is, before you realise.”

Chandler didn't move, didn't even twitch and after a few minutes Kent decided to head back home. He started to walk away and didn't look back, not even once.

* * * * *

Like all internal investigations, that which swallowed up three month's of Chandler's team was far worse than the incident itself. Everyone had been forced to look at their own behaviour during that case, and the ones that had preceded it. Everyone was told in unequivocal terms that they had blood on their hands.

But they were, as Miles put it one evening over pizza and beer, “still bloody good at what we do. And those idiots in charge can't deny that we get results. We solve the unsolvable.”

“Not been catching many people alive though, have we?” Riley asked.

Miles had shrugged. “I'd like to see those bastards spend the rest of their lives behind bars just as much as anyone, but at least they ain't killing any more.”

No one had anything to say about that.

* * * * *

Not long after the investigation had formally finished, long after funerals had been held and eulogies delivered, Chandler came back to work. He had officially been seconded to another unit during the investigation, leaving Miles in charge, but they all knew that he hadn't been doing any police work while he was gone. Kent had looked up nervously when Chandler had come into the office, looking as pristine as ever, but there was no sign that anything was amiss. He nodded to them all in turn and then headed over to his office and shut the door. Seconds later Miles opened it and stepped inside.

Kent and Mansell looked over at each other and then back at their computer screens. A new case had just come their way and they were busy gathering background for the briefing.

Miles came out twenty minutes later not exactly looking pleased – that was always far worse than his angry face – but at least as if he was sure Chandler wasn't about to do anything too monumentally stupid within the next hour.

“He okay, Skip?” Kent asked.

Miles gave him an all too knowing look. “He's been worse.”

Kent supposed that would have to do for now.

* * * * * *

Kent had learned to hate stakeouts during the Ripper case, and tonight was no exception. It was cold and it was wet and he and Chandler were sat in a car with no working heating and nothing to say to each other.

Well, actually Kent had plenty he had to say, bubbling under the surface, but he knew he'd never say any of the words. Not to Chandler's face at any rate. He would, instead, recite everything he wanted to say to his reflection in the bathroom mirror when he was sure all his room-mates were in bed, or out for the evening. Thing's He'd Tell Chandler had apparently become a familiar routine now.

“Miles keeps suggesting I'm gay,” Chandler said, completely out of nowhere. Kent was glad he'd finished his coffee or he might have been spitting it all over the dashboard.

“Yes, sir?” Kent asked after a moment, because it seemed like Chandler was looking for some sort of response.

“I don't think that's it.”

They didn't say another word until the suspect ran into the middle of the street, covered in blood, and all hell was set loose.

* * * * * *

Kent hated hospitals. He hated interviewing suspects in them. He hated visiting relatives in them. And he especially hated being a patient in one.

The verdict was that he'd dislocated his shoulder whilst tackling the killer to the ground and he swore the cure had hurt more than the injury itself. Chandler had been the one to get the handcuffs on the killer, his face white as a sheet, but no one had realised quite how injured Kent was until he had failed to stand up. Chandler's face lost even more colour then, which Kent hadn't been sure was possible. But then it was a little hard to think clearly when you were losing consciousness.

The nurse had told him that his boyfriend had come with him in the ambulance and “wasn't it lovely, to have someone like that”. Kent told himself he hadn't had the energy to correct her, but really, that was so very far from the truth that Kent wondered why he even bothered any more.

“You gave us all quite a scare,” Chandler said. He was standing in the doorway with a plastic cup in his hand, steam rising gently from it. Kent found himself staring at the steam, avoiding looking directly at Chandler. He was unaccountably nervous, his hands sweaty, his mouth dry.

“Sorry,” he said, in a small voice. He coughed slightly and Chandler helped him take a sip of water, his fingers brushing against the back of Kent's neck.

“Just don't do it again.”

Kent fell asleep soon after, though he was sure at one point he'd felt a soft pressure on his forehead, but dismissed it as wishful thinking.

* * * * *

Chandler had insisted on taking Kent home.

“I don't really need a chaperone, sir.”

“You can hardly get on your bike like that, can you?” He pointed at Kent’s sling – he'd be wearing it for a good few weeks.

“I can get a taxi, sir, honestly.”

“Emerson,” Chandler said, and Kent felt his heartbeat quicken, “just let me do this, all right?”

And Chandler gave him that look, which was totally impossible to say no to.

“Yes, sir.”

Kent drifted to sleep on the way, even though he tried not to. He was still on some pretty strong painkillers and signed off work for a week, though he was hoping that Miles could work his magic and get him back on official duty quicker than that.

It was only when Chandler gently touched his wrist and whispered, “we're here” that Kent blinked open his eyes and realised he had no idea where they were.

“Sir?” he asked. “This isn’t my house.”

“No, it's mine.”

Chandler got out of the car and moved around to the passenger side, all the while Kent was trying to understand what was happening.

“Just don't argue, and go inside,” Chandler said.

Kent did as he was told.

* * * * *

It was odd, really, how okay this felt. Kent was in the spare bedroom and he go the distinct impression that nobody on the team knew that he was there. But it felt okay. Chandler obviously wasn't used to sharing his space with anyone and Kent made sure to go out of his way to make his presence felt as little as possible – observing the way Chandler did things and then copying them exactly. He was very good at that.

And Chandler did seem to be making allowances for him, which was both disturbing and sweet in a way which Kent didn't really want to quantify. It was enough to know that Chandler was there when he went to bed and there when he woke up, too, even if they were separated by a wall.

* * * * *

Kent didn't argue with the doctor's diagnosis after all, even if it meant he stayed at home while Chandler went to work. It gave him time to snoop around – in a way that he hoped would signal if caught that he was only interested in learning more about Chandler and not in a violating his space kind of way. But any doubts about his intentions were quickly buried.

It also gave him time to perfect his cooking. He wasn't great – he'd once left a dishcloth on an oven hob and nearly set his student flat on fire – but he could now make a decent omelette at least. Well, fairly decent.

He knew they couldn't go on like this, whatever this was. His room-mates were wondering where he was and he only had so many stories he could spin for them. They weren't as close as he maybe would have liked, but they were still his friends and he was finding it all a bit tiresome, thinking up lies.

And then there was Riley and Mansell who he kept having to put off from visiting him with “grapes and vodka” and he just knew that any day now they were going to turn up at his house and discover that he wasn't currently living there. Then where would they be?

He'd tried to ask Chandler what they were doing, but Chandler had just changed the subject and Kent hadn't had the heart to pursue it further.

Until Chandler came back from the office with a black eye and blood on his shirt and Kent had silently undressed him and moved him under the shower, and stayed with him until he'd lost that haunted look it seemed harder and harder for him to shake off.

Kent made them dinner, which was eaten in silence. Then he went to his bedroom only for Chandler to catch hold of his wrist and stop him.

“I'd like some company,” Chandler said, looking at the floor instead of Kent.

“Okay,” Kent said.

* * * * *

It wasn't that Chandler was uninterested in sex, but that sex had to be on his terms. No surprises. No new sensations unless they were well planned out in advance. Even so, Kent enjoyed what he was given, and Chandler was always a reciprocal lover, making sure that Kent was enjoying himself and seemly uninterested in his own orgasm. Kent decided that he could probably get used to that.

Things didn't much change. Chandler still found himself flirted with by men and women alike and still bumbled his way out of it. Sometimes he discussed the attraction he'd felt with Kent and after the first few times Kent grew more confident in analysing why that person had spoken to something in Chandler and what it meant. The sex was usually better those nights, freer, and so Kent started reading more psychology books, but only in secret. Somehow it felt like betrayal and they both liked to keep up the illusion of an open relationship, free of secrets.

The others barely blinked an eye when they realised what was going on, though no one said anything and no declaration had been made. They weren’t one of the best teams on the force for nothing.

Mansell did put more porn than usual on Kent's computer, but Kent didn’t think that was really any indication of anything other than Mansell being a dick.

They didn't say the L word. Kent thought he might be able to, but was afraid that Chandler wouldn't be able to say it back and then think that he'd failed somehow in keeping whatever it was they were doing together. In fact they didn’t define themselves at all. One moment they were separate, the next they were together and everything else was a complication that neither of them needed.

The main thing was that it worked. And they were less unhappy together than they had been apart. Which is, after all, surely the only thing that really mattered.  



End file.
